~ Creative writing. Inspiration.

Mayoral Debate: An issue behind the issues

Hey you! Yes, you! Did you know that the Mayor of Philadelphia is soon going to change? It will no longer be Mayor Michael Nutter. On Nov. 3, the general election will take place. It is known, however, that more eligible voters participate in Presidential Elections than they do in local and state elections. If you have a problem with something outside your doorstep, like the installation of a stop sign in your neighborhood, you probably will not be able to get the President to do so after sending him an email.

What I am trying to say is, some of the 2015 Mayoral candidates are closer to us than you might think. According to Philly.com, Osborne Hart is a Walmart overnight stocker; Jim Foster is a newspaper publisher; Boris Kindij is a property manager for Rentwell, a real estate company; and Doug Oliver was senior VP for Philadelphia Gas Works.

Clueless myself, I set out to seek if anyone actually has knowledge about the debate, about the candidates, and general knowledge of all of it.

I spoke to seven people between 21 and 30 years old, all who stood within about 30 feet of each other.

Mike Mizzanti, Jaylen Mcrae, and Rachel Meirson all stood with their eyes wide open. Without hesitation, they simultaneously responded, “Uh, nothing,” when asked if they know anything about the mayoral debate. Mizzanti gets his news mostly from the International section. After that, “I don’t go out of my way to really read inside a story,” he says.

Three other people were also uninformed about the mayor’s debate.

I asked Ashanti Ross what she knows about the mayoral debate. “Nothing,” she states. Ross votes only in Presidential elections. When it comes to the next Mayor, however, she “doesn’t even know who is running.” I then told her about some of the candidates and where they work. “Those are pretty regular jobs,” Ross mentions. She explains that “the Presidential Election is everywhere on Facebook…Twitter…social media.” Like Mizzanti, Ross also relies on “something [that] captures [her] eye.” Ross adds, “Unless my mom tells me to go and vote, I think it is mostly older people participating.”

A Portland State study finds that older people are more likely to vote in mayoral elections than do younger people. Also, the median age for people casting ballots, the university’s research holds, is 60 years old.

According to Governing Data, the 2011 Philadelphia Election saw 20 percent in voter turnout. Since 1952, the highest voter turnout in a Philadelphia election was 77 percent in 1971.

It is evident that people see more about who is running for president, than they do about who is running for mayor. Because of commercials, and simply the scale in which Presidential conversations are held, people are more likely to vote in bigger elections. So you see, there is not a specific issue that can be discussed about the mayoral election, if one does not know anything about it at all. And that is the issue in the mayoral debate, which takes place on Nov. 3.